Martin Marty on Realistic Hope and Hopeful Realism. Obama can “discourse intelligently and expansively about [Reinhold] Niebuhr. It is clear to those who know Niebuhr and who read and observe Obama, that he has internalized some Niebuhrian motifs… ‘Realistic hope’ is a caution against utopianism, naive idealism, the claiming of bragging rights, or politically ‘not knowing to come in out of the rain.’”